Étiquette : Claudio Arrau
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50 versions of Schumann’s Fantasy
Schumann’s Fantasy is a work truly apart in the composer’s oeuvre. It is perhaps the least illustrative and the least programmatic of the composer’s works, but the most contemplative as well as the most passionate. Composed in two distinct phases – first the first movement, to be played with intensity and passion, composed for Clara,…
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Blind listening to Brahms’ first Piano Concerto
When preparing a blind listening session, there is always the question of which versions to choose. In the case of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, there is no shortage of versions. I have chosen not to select the really old versions, recorded on 78 rpm. It’s not that they don’t have a place in the selection…
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Arrau speaks
Claudio Arrau, photography by Allan Warren Between May 1980 and July 1981, Arrau gave a series of interviews to Joseph Horowitz, who published the collection in 1982. In them, Claudio Arrau talks about his practice of the instrument, his ideas about music and interpretation, and his own experience of the great historical movements of the…
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The art of Claudio Arrau
There is something elusive about Arrau’s art. His interpretations seem to take on an additional dimension with each new listening, and one seems to understand new meanings, sometimes radically different from the previous ones, as one moves through the pianist’s considerable discographic legacy. Arrau is a Chilean pianist, but it is the Germanic repertoire that…
Sofronichrist 